I have been using Flash professionally since version 1, and I am deeply ambivalent about the technology, but it's a fact of life on the internet.
Flash Player has always been very slow (and generally yucky) on the mac platform, the newest version is much better. Install the new player and you'll notice a lot less drag on your browsing.
Google Apps is a service from Google which provides email, calendar, contacts, and documents using your custom domain name. When you open a free (with an optional $50 per user/year support & upgrades) google apps account you get a customized version of the gmail service which you can use to create email accounts, (essentially gmail accounts, google apps email addresses use the same online interface, privacy settings, and POP/Imap accessibility as a 'generic' @gmail.com email address) Each user in the domain also gets calendar, contacts, documents, and a start page. The free service is sufficient for many small businesses and organizations, and the premium features are priced at a very reasonable $50 per year.
10th street just east of 2nd Ave, NYC July 1, 2008
this sure is a hard way to learn what 'quick release' means: the wheel and u lock are obviously brand new, not more than days out of a bike store.
Its just brilliant marketing.
iPhoto, iCal, Mail etc. on the web at me.com? its-not-about-you.com but rather macintosh-environment.com.
i've always been mobile, now the 'macintosh environment' is too: hell, its not even a computer anymore, its just an insanely great idea.
That it works on so many levels is just a testament to the quality of the branding/marketing.
iPhoto, iCal, Mail etc. on the web at me.com? its-not-about-you.com but rather macintosh-environment.com.
i've always been mobile, now the 'macintosh environment' is too: hell, its not even a computer anymore, its just an insanely great idea.
That it works on so many levels is just a testament to the quality of the branding/marketing.
For my first stab at technology punditry, I'm going to make what I think is a very obvious prediction:
Sometime in the next 18 months, Apple will introduce iPhone Nano: a very fun dumb phone.
iPhone Nano does four things: Cell Phone, iPod, Text Message, Camera.
The design of the device, iPod and camera make it fun. It is not a "smart phone", but you're really dumb if you can't figure out how to use it's dead simple controls. It's cheap because it doesn't have a contract and costs roughly what an iPod Nano costs today.
The phones are sold directly by apple with prepaid voice minutes and text messages. Innovatively, you can buy minutes both on prepaid cards and through the itunes store - i.e. don't have to go to the store to buy a card to top up your minutes.
I want the iPhone Nano to be a slider phone, with roughly the dimensions of the current iPod Nano, though more square and overall slightly larger. Closed, the front of the phone is almost completely covered by a square touch screen. The phone has the same satin metal finish of the nano, and comes in a range of colors. Open, it has a very simple keypad: 12 oversized buttons old school looking phone keypad so obvious even my dog could make a call on it. unlike other phone keypads, these buttons feel big and luxurious.
Besides the touch screen, the only other visible button on the phone is a lock button, however the phone itself acts a big button - you just squeeze or pinch the whole phone like a clicker.
Since the display is a square, and the device has an accelerometer, the controls automatically orient to however you are holding the device. Many controls are implemented with the accelerometer: you might give the phone a little shake to wake it up or refuse a call, and you change the 'mode' of by rotating the phone itself -- if you're looking at the ipod controls, you would simply rotate the phone 90 degrees and the controls would go to the next function (phone, camera, ipod, settings) one on each side of the square.
The young love the iphone nano rabidly, and parents are happy with the usage control of prepaid minutes and no email. It also obviously appeals to people who adamantly don't want email on their phone but who do want to combine their phone and their ipod into one device and even gives apple the opportunity to sell them as 'weekend phones' for iPhone owners who want just a little bit of a break from the network.
The camera is nothing to write home about, but it's fun, takes crappy pictures and - surprise surprise can do MMS messages.
The iPod implements yet another ipod interface: its a simplified version which superimposes the familiar iPod control wheel over the cover art when the display is touched, in each corner there is a button to open lists or settings.
The iPhone Nano is cheap, relatively speaking (and people, come on, the iPhone 3G might be twice as fast and half the price of the 1G iphone, but its obviously more expensive) a 4 gig iPhone Nano debuts at $250 (or even $299) but after 8 months or so its selling for $199. Eventually Apple also sells the phones through wireless carriers which results in them being available for 'free' with a contract.
I think iPhone Nano could arrive as early as Fall 2008 and I'm willing to bet that a product with many of these ideas is on sale before the end of 2009.
I hope you heard it here first.
Sometime in the next 18 months, Apple will introduce iPhone Nano: a very fun dumb phone.
iPhone Nano does four things: Cell Phone, iPod, Text Message, Camera.
The design of the device, iPod and camera make it fun. It is not a "smart phone", but you're really dumb if you can't figure out how to use it's dead simple controls. It's cheap because it doesn't have a contract and costs roughly what an iPod Nano costs today.
The phones are sold directly by apple with prepaid voice minutes and text messages. Innovatively, you can buy minutes both on prepaid cards and through the itunes store - i.e. don't have to go to the store to buy a card to top up your minutes.
I want the iPhone Nano to be a slider phone, with roughly the dimensions of the current iPod Nano, though more square and overall slightly larger. Closed, the front of the phone is almost completely covered by a square touch screen. The phone has the same satin metal finish of the nano, and comes in a range of colors. Open, it has a very simple keypad: 12 oversized buttons old school looking phone keypad so obvious even my dog could make a call on it. unlike other phone keypads, these buttons feel big and luxurious.
Besides the touch screen, the only other visible button on the phone is a lock button, however the phone itself acts a big button - you just squeeze or pinch the whole phone like a clicker.
Since the display is a square, and the device has an accelerometer, the controls automatically orient to however you are holding the device. Many controls are implemented with the accelerometer: you might give the phone a little shake to wake it up or refuse a call, and you change the 'mode' of by rotating the phone itself -- if you're looking at the ipod controls, you would simply rotate the phone 90 degrees and the controls would go to the next function (phone, camera, ipod, settings) one on each side of the square.
The young love the iphone nano rabidly, and parents are happy with the usage control of prepaid minutes and no email. It also obviously appeals to people who adamantly don't want email on their phone but who do want to combine their phone and their ipod into one device and even gives apple the opportunity to sell them as 'weekend phones' for iPhone owners who want just a little bit of a break from the network.
The camera is nothing to write home about, but it's fun, takes crappy pictures and - surprise surprise can do MMS messages.
The iPod implements yet another ipod interface: its a simplified version which superimposes the familiar iPod control wheel over the cover art when the display is touched, in each corner there is a button to open lists or settings.
The iPhone Nano is cheap, relatively speaking (and people, come on, the iPhone 3G might be twice as fast and half the price of the 1G iphone, but its obviously more expensive) a 4 gig iPhone Nano debuts at $250 (or even $299) but after 8 months or so its selling for $199. Eventually Apple also sells the phones through wireless carriers which results in them being available for 'free' with a contract.
I think iPhone Nano could arrive as early as Fall 2008 and I'm willing to bet that a product with many of these ideas is on sale before the end of 2009.
I hope you heard it here first.
there is a well organized bike tour, including a marked route and a map you can download here:http://nyc.gov/html/misc/pdf/bike_the_falls_map.pdf
of course, dont expect the bike lanes not to be full of clueless new yorkers and tourists who dont quite grasp what the painted lines and pictures of people riding bikes mean, so be careful.
In New York, bicycle ridership has increased 77 percent between 2000 and 2007, with approximately 130,000 daily cyclists now on the street. The city has committed to building 200 miles of new bike lanes by 2009, but riding a bike in New York remains dangerous: There were 23 cyclist deaths last year--the highest in eight years.i ride a bike every day in manhattan, every day i pass at least one of these bikes; most days more. navigating the angry pedal to the medal get the hell out of my way streets every day, these ghost bikes don't look less like the scenes of accidents, and more like the scenes of murders. I know that many if not most of them do mark tragic accidents, but as a firsthand witness to the anger aggression and cluelessness of most car drivers in nyc, no doubt too many result from the selfishness and greed that makes people act like such assholes at the wheel. As more and more of these bikes inevitably appear on the sidewalks, i hope all you new yorkers in such a fucking hurry will be shamed into chilling out a little bit and sharing the road